Context

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the world’s ocean water has gradually become more acidic. Like global warming, this process, which is known as Ocean Acidification, is direct consequence of increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by human activities. At date, the present changes represent approximately a 30 percent increase in acidity. Future predictions indicate that the oceans will continue to absorb carbon dioxide and become even more acidic. Ocean Acidification may affect many marine organisms in varying degrees, but especially those that build their shells and skeletons with calcium carbonate (CaCO3), such as corals, oysters, clams, mussels, snails, and small algae, but is also projected that impacts of the Ocean acidification will propagate towards higher biological levels such as population, communities and ecosystems, indeed impacting on socioeconomic sectors that rely on the services provided by coastal and oceanic ecosystems

To confront these threats of the ocean acidification on the marine ecosystems, on December 15th, 2015, a group of 24 scientists from seven Latin-American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, and Chile meet at the city of Concepcion, Chile, for to establish the Latin-American Ocean Acidification Network (LAOCA Network).

The LAOCA network consists of 36 members from 8 Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru. Developing researchers in Ocean Acidification in 4 main lines of research: Carbonate system chemistry (37%), Modeling (13%), Socio-Ecological Assessment (15%), In turn, these lines of research cover the following environments : Staurino (27%), Coastal (49%), and Oceanic (24%)